US calls for release of its citizen sentenced to death

The US State Department condemns the death sentence of a American former
marine of Iranian descent on charges that he was spying for the CIA.

9:26PM GMT 09 Jan 2012

Amir Mirzai Hekmati, 28, was "sentenced to death for co-operating with a hostile nation, membership of the CIA and trying to implicate Iran in terrorism," the verdict said, according to Fars.

Hekmati, who was born in the United States to an Iranian immigrant family, was shown on Iranian state television in mid-December saying in fluent Farsi and English that he was a Central Intelligence Agency operative sent to infiltrate the Iranian intelligence ministry.

He had been arrested months earlier.

Iranian officials said his cover was blown by agents for Iran who spotted him at the US-run Bagram military airbase in neighbouring Afghanistan.

But Hekmati's family in the United States told US media he had travelled to Iran to visit his Iranian grandmothers and he was not a spy.